sfhomelesswikiaorg-20200215-history
SFHomeless Yahoo! Group Site and Blogger
This unique SFHomeless Yahoo! Group was started in 2007, by a small group of San Franciscans who were homeless residents and veterans living in our tax funded shelter system. A dismal system which had no standards of care and very little oversight or enforcement of existing public health and safety laws. Human Rights was something ignored, on a daily basis at most of our shelters and inside our City's SRO (Single Room Occupant) Hotel Rooms. In 1906, about 250,000 residents of San Francisco found themselves suddenly homeless after the Great Quake and fires that destroyed Our City. Without endless studies, meetings and surveys, nearly all 250,000 residents were able to get new homes and offices built within the next five years or so. In 2010, we have about 30,000 residents waiting for safe spaces to live in, yet there only exists a total of 104 slots available !! Obviously, our local, state and federal government and non-profits and our community has FAILED to meet the real needs of our people most in need. Yet, in the past 15 years, they have all spent billions (and got it all back from campaign contributions, kick backs, salaries and funding) to help us, but all they gave us were a bunch of temporary solutions which only served to keep us held captive in a never ending merry-go-round, which failed to give us what we needed - permanent, safe and inhabitable places to LIVE !!! Before this past year, a huge percentage of all of the funding and community donations never even made it into the hands of our people, in need. Programs and non-profits that were trusted and known to bebetter than most all others were routinely roadblocked and cut by city agencies and other community groups who had alternative and often hidden agendas and special interest groups behind them who DID NOT WANT OUR PEOPLE TO ESCAPE these programs and shelters because they valued their cash flow and 'need to control' more than the lives of the people they were suppposed to be serving to recover and move out of dependency. ORIGINAL PURPOSE OF THIS SFHOMELESS YAHOO! GROUP The original purpose of the group was to give all residents and staff of our city's homeless shelters and housing systems a place to share information, for better worse, without fear of reprisal or retaliation by bad staff and violent criminals who worked at or profitted greatly from the crimes happening in these systems. Crimes ranging from simple assault and petty theft to grand larceny, embezzlement, organized strong arm robbery, extortion, rape and murder against the most vulnerable segments of our community. Nepotism and lack of hiring standards was the order of the day, as was decided years ago by community leaders and advocate groups who wanted the lowest thresh-hold possible for shelter staff. Well, this City got exactly the kind of shelter and housing staff they wanted. They (our community, government and advocates) inadvertently set us all up for failure and abuse from the very beginning. If you want staff and clients to fail, then go ahead and hire people who were (for years until recently when they got out of prison last month, for example) selling crack, boosting stereos and beating women for years, to watch over our most traumatized residents. Recipe for disaster in anyone's book. Noone bothered to ask or allow the at risk clients themselves to create their own programs which would have put client safety at the top of the list - hiring standards would have demanded safe staff and not permitted favortism, nepotism or criminal staff fired from one shelter to work across the street at another without proving they had changed their ways. This is essentially what was done here, systems designed intentionally to NOT have any standard for hiring staff -- and then your result is a no-brainer. If you hire known criminals (who have not reformed or been out long enough to shed old ways) then you will have massive abuse, theft and torture all around. No hiring standards in shelters is the kiss of death of for the safety and security of staff, clients and the public, at large. Short sided and naive policies which have been directly responsible for massive losses of life, liberties and property of our people in need of great protection and high quality, trustworthy and proven staff, not just anyone being allowed to watch over them at night. Before this anonymous group came along, when a client or staff exposed abuse or theft they would be likely attacked, ripped off and set up to get written up on bogus charges and then D-O-S'd (Denied Of Services) or fired resulting in the whistleblower forced into the streets, at risk, for standing up for what is right. They were punished for expressing their views and observations from the inside of the shelters and residential hotels, where they lived, worked and some unfortunately, died in, suffering preventable tragedies and premature deaths. Yes, many shelter clients died prematurely and had been severely abused by bad policies and lack of public interest, support and oversight. We believe some with obesity and respiratory problems may have died because of a lack of proper ventilation in several of the shelters. Others were patient dumped onto our streets, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, after hospital and emergency room treatments. Expensive ($900 a month cost to patients) tax subsidized prescriptions are often sold like candy in every shelter between clients and staff. No accountability. Very little documentation. Faked clients records. Illegal government billings by local non-profits for services and programs that were either non-existent or were not maintained adequately. Contract compliance was a joke. Obvious long term, systematic abuse, problem staff and recurring issues were logged in and treated as seperate cases, that were opened and closed fast, as single items. They were never reported or investigated as ongoing systemic problems or as ongoing criminal activities, etc. which caused suffering to unabated, month after month, year after year with no end in sight. Here's another example of just how bad our people were criminally abused by tax funded shelter staff. One shelter we know of, used to rent vans (4 or 5 with 7 or 8 clients, per van - every month for years) to transport disabled and elderly men to pick up their monthly SSI Checks. How nice of them to help our people (vets, disabled, retired, mentally ill residents), huh ? Then the rogue shelter staff would drop the vulnerable onto the streets of the Bayview-Hunters Point Area, leaving them there for several minutes, as potential prey for local predators. They would drive back around to the terrified clients and offer to drive them back to the shelter, for Half of their SSI Check or they would make them walk or hobble back to the shelter on their own. You must realize that many of the criminal staff who pulled these crimes against humanity ARE STILL EMPLOYED AT OUR LOCAL NON-PROFITS TODAY ! And many of the victims are STILL CLIENTS OF OUR LOCAL NON-PROFITS or ARE ON THE STREETS AND INSIDE OF PARKS BECAUSE THEY ARE AFRAID TO TRUST THE NON-PROFITS AND THE CITY BECAUSE BY INTENT OR NEGLECT THE CITY'S LEADERS AND NON-PROFIT MANAGEMENT ALL ALLOWED THESE HORRENDOUS CRIMES TO TAKE PLACE, EVERY DAY FOR 15 YEARS. Nearly everyone wants a safe place and get off the street. But if you offer them a spot at a place with a history of abuse or with staff they know are abusers, only a fool would make such a naive offer to an experienced homeless person, who knows better than the uninformed outreach worker, what's really going on. The same staff who raped, robbed, beat and drugged up our people back ten years ago, are STILL working at the shelters and housing programs TODAY ! ZERO ACCOUNTABILTY TO TAXPAYERS AND OUR COMMUNITY AT LARGE FOR MILLIONS OF DOLLARS' WORTH OF TAX FUNDING AND COMMUNITY DONATIONS AND RESOURCES FOR MORE THAN 15 YEARS !!! Lots of intimidation, complete lack of positive communications between clients, staff, supervisors, directors, city officials and departments and our SF community in general. WE EXPOSE SYSTEMATIC LIES AND MEDIA PROPAGANDA BY PUBLISHING YOUR REAL LIFE STORIES Everything looked great (from the outside and according to local media propaganda) but on the inside, where the reality is, Our people were being abused, scammed, ripped off, erronesously denied services and continuously rotated from street to shelter to sro to shelter to street, to jail and back again; by neglect and poor design which made it truly a Captive Shelter Systesm. A modern form of Human Trafficking costing us lives and billions of dollars every decade. It was a maddening merry-go-round of poverty pimping and lack of care which took a great toll on our City and led to widespread mistrust and avoidance of sometimes well intentioned city and non-profit services. We were harmed most by the people put in positions of trust to HELP US, NOT HARM US, whose funding and salaries came from OUR TAXES & DONATIONS. EXPENSIVE TEMPORARY SOLUTIONS COSTING MILLIONS, WHICH LED US NOWHERE ! Both in terms of un-needed extra costs ( $300 Million ) in overtime pay and other costs (medical and human lives) associated with 'crisis intervention' and 'emergency response' to deal with predictable traumas which could have been minimized by spending half that amount ($150 Million) up front on more safe spaces, health care and end the criminalization and systematic abuse. Back in the day, one of our shelters (Mission Rock) actually had racoons that would sneak into the cracks in the walls and floors and the residents gave them all nicknames.... another shelter housing about 350 client had a full blown meth lab operating every night in the shelters' industrial kitchen in the building's basement, as recent as 2001. There are literally hundreds of true life stories like that on our group and web sites which are read by people all around the world. One site has had about 30,000 page views and the others have a few thousand hits, every month or so. WHO ARE OUR SITE MEMBERS AND VISITORS ? Our SFHomeless Yahoo! Group Site Members and Visitors include poverty law centers, journalists, researchers, social advocates, law firms and other homeless and poverty web groups and sites from around the country. Our visitors come from all over the world to see what Our City is doing to and for our resident, most in need. 37,000 Visitors for example, have come to our NowPublic.com and Blogger web sites, which feature YOUR REAL LIFE STORIES! In the past few years, as the shelter residents and even others living in Golden Gate Park and on our City's streets begin to share and learn more about the policies, processes and players were directly impacting the safety and security of all of San Francisco's residents and tourists and businesses. Small teams went out and WATCHED and LISTENED to how our shelters were funded and what kind of abuse, theft, neglect and harm had been wasting lives and tax dollars for almost 15 years with very little governmental oversight and enforcement. THE SHARING OF YOUR STORIES SAVES LIVES AND EXTENDS OUR LIFE EXPECTANCY The life expectancy in a homeless shelter is about 40.6 years. Some say about half the life expectancy of people who DO NOT live in a homeless shelter. A form of premeditated genocide one could argue. The shelter residents relied on the Coalition on Homelessness for support, income from Street Sheet Sales and other activities, but the residents still had no truly independent way of exposing all the corruption in the homeless and housing systems because they would get targeted by criminal staff and clients for revenge. BEING ANONYMOUS HELPS PREVENT RETALIATION IN THE FORM OF BEING KICKED OUT INTO THE STREETS ANDBEINGDENIEDSERVICES UNJUSTLY BY CORRUPTED OR ANGRY SHELTER OR PRGRAM STAFF !!! Because nearly all of the information the SFHomeless Yahoo Group receives is posted anonymously, the community and the world was finally able to see first hand, some 16 photo albums of real photos of bad shelter meals, night staff sleeping on the job and unsafe and unsanitary conditions from the inside of nearly every shelter in the City. HOW FAR HAS OUR GROUP COME OVER THE PAST FEW YEARS ? Today, this group and its finely tuned network of investigators, journalists, advocates, non-profit staff, agency contacts all over San Francisco and around the country, are able to receive information about abuse, fraud, theft, waste in our City's homeless and housing systems and share that information with residents and clients and staff, to keep us all safe. While the main focus of this group is exposing everything that harms our elderly, poor, disabled, disadvantaged and homeless residents and veterans, we spend a great deal of time posting statistics, historical and news stories about solutions and alternative ways of funding and managing homeless and housing systems that are humane, safe and cost effective. We also help support and promote city workers, police officers, case workers, politicians and others who DO CARE about all of our people. In the past two years, our homeless and housing systems have suffered greatly under the current and most recent City Administrations. At a time when other cities are expanding their services to meet the needs of their people, our City is not. Its been cutting the most critical and vital services to our people most at risk, and in need. YOUR STORIES INCREASE AWARENESS, OPENS UP HEARTS AND MINDS AND ENABLES GREAT CHANGE TO HAPPENFOR US ALL !!! Our main goal is to increase the awareness of everyone who cares about how our people are taken care of. A lot of propaganda has been laid on the backs of people who helped build our Cities and deserve to always be treated with dignity and respect. We hope to help open the minds and hearts of people who think everything is okay and funding and conditions are adequate, when the opposite is true, more often than not. JOIN OUR COMMON STRUGGLE TO WIPE OUT IGNORANCE AND IMPROVE THE LIVES OF EVERYONE IN OUR COMMUNITY, TOGETTHER! We invite you to skim over some of the 5,000 messages posted on the SFHomeless Yahoo Group Site and visit their other sites which have articles on everything from Sales Tax being illegally charged to Food Stamp EBT Cards processed by J P Morgan EFS, to stories about Hate Crimes Against Of Homeless, ADA Law Suits, Shelter Standard of Care Laws, Case Management Fraud, Libraries built inside homeless shelters for free by book donations, Grand Jury Reports on Homelessness and much more. SEND US YOUR REAL LIFE STORIES, TIPS, PHOTOS, VIDEOS AND THOUGHTS ABOUT LIVING AND WORKING INSIDE OF OUR CITY'S HOMELESS AND HOUSING PROGRAMS AND SYSTEMS... If you are a client or staff of any homeless or housing service and wish to submit any kind of comment, kudos, tips, stories, photos or videos to share or call attention to something that affects anyone's safety or health, you may send your information ANONYMOUSLY, to keep yourself safe. Your information will be checked out and forwarded discretely to appropriate people who can make a change for the better, based on the information you send us. Later, summaries may be posted online to keep everyone informed about what's really happening inside all of our City's agencies, services and neighborhoods. HISTORICAL NOTE: SFHomeless Yahoo Group was started about the same time as SFHomeless.Net, but they are two seperate and distinct groups. The SFHomeless Yahoo Group is managed by homeless and former homeless residents of San Francisco, but sometimes homeless people; social and human rights advocates and journalists from other cities volunteer to help moderate or perform research. Other SFHomeless Yahoo! Group Related Sites: SFHomeless Yahoo Group Blogger: ''' http://sfhomelessyahoogroup.blogspot.com/ Various stories related to homelessness, policies, research, a National Homeless Counter, polls about shelters, meals, hiring standards, standard of care laws and copies of articles posted on the NowPublic Site (below). Site has over 160 Regular Members, 6,000 messages posted, 16 photo albums with photos of real meals served in shelters, shelter conditions, staff sleeping on the job, etc. '''SFHomeless Yahoo! Group Flickr Photo Album Pages: http://www.flickr.com/photos/17317856@N06/ Pictures of meals taken by people inside of shelters and feeding places around San Francisco. Also photos of shelter floor monitors sleeping and wearing sound eliminating head phones jamming to music all night, instead of listening for trouble, arguments or shouts for help from the sleeping residents.... and more. SFHomeless Yahoo! Group's Global NowPublic.com Stories and Reports Online: ' http://www.nowpublic.com/search?fulltext=1&type=story&keys=sfhomeless Covers fraud, hate crimes, assaults, illegal sales tax charges by J P Morgan, Kroger Co., San Francisco's Restaurant Meals Program, Diebold Voting Machine problems (lots of homeless and poor people vote in SF), homelessness research and more. We uncovered local SF pizza parlors, restaurants and markets illegally charging Sales Tax and card processing fees on Our EBT Food Stamp Card Food Benefits. '''LOW INCOME CLIENT IDENTITY THEFT RISK -- UPDATE !: ' '''Most Recent Update: July 2011 - Repeating Violation -Arriba Juntos, 1850 Mission St, SF, CA Repeating Violations of Client File Security & Risk of ID Theft At Arriba Juntos, again ! ''' A week or so ago, (July, 2011) a homeless advocate came into Muddy Waters Cafe on Valencia, at 16th Street (Mission District) with a stack of Confidential Client Files, apparently from Arriba Juntos. We called it in to 3-1-1. We also got more tips, as follows: One of the bins hard cardboard. Another bin had unsafe, wide-cut papers shredded. One bin had Confidential Client Files that were completely unshredded and nothing was blacked out. One bin alone can yield more than 100 complete ID Profiles worth about $100 to $500 each on the streets, or more, depending on if gangs, ex-boyfriends or even banks would pay more for particular family names or addresses to target for big bucks. END-2011-Full Story was posted on FaceBook. ---- '''BELOW is the older - 2009 Incidents posted previously, two years ago, without editing. 2009: We discovered local non-profit leaving CONFIDENTIAL Low Income Client Case Files being set out on the sidewalk in unlocked bins every week. Here is a preview of the photos showing Confidential Client Files left in open bins at 1850 Mission Street (Arriba Juntos' Offices) weekly from August 2009 until December 2009. ''' We suspect they've been repeating this risky and illegal practice weekly, for years, until we were forced (by their lack of compliance), to expose them publicly - after we warned them in person, back in August, 2009. '''PHOTO ID REDACTION NOTE: None of the physical files, forms and paperwork dumped were blacked out (redacted) when we found them. All of the black or colored redaction blocking you will see on these photos, came from us. Before we released these photos, we used editing tools to conceal personally identifying client names and data to prevent misuse. Arriba Juntos' staff apparently dumped these files into unlocked bins without redacting or removing sensitive personal data from them. In August of 2009, we received our first tip from a Good Samaritan who saw a bin with thousands of Arriba Juntos (registered non-profit serving low income residents in the Mission District) client names, dates of birth, social security numbers, counseling appointment notes, home addresses, birth certificates, court case records and more; in front of their offices at 1850 Mission Street. On the busy sidewalk. We took sample files for proof for investigators and shot photos. The Good Samaritan went inside Arriba Juntos' offices right away, to warn them about the illegal and neglectful way they were putting our people at risk of identity theft. Their staff said they would take care of it. Thank you. Several weeks later, we got more tips that this illegal practice was still happening, every week. Appears that they have been dumping their client files unshredded into unsecure bins every Monday, perhaps for many years now, without good care. Two months after we warned Aribba Juntos' Staff, in October, we took more photos and video of the exposed confidential client files and lists which included forms from other non-profits (Center City Hospitality House, Glide, Episcopal Community Services, St. Anthony's Foundation, et al.) and State and Federal Forms and Applications (filled out) for AFDC, General Assistance, Birth Certificates, Educational Financial Aid. Client Lists and paperwork included all kinds of personally identifying information, bank statements, family member names and more. We found copies of Birth Certificates, too. By December 2009, we were tired of waiting, so we double checked, found the same practice going on and decided to expose them publicly, as a last resort to get them to follow the law and keep our people safe from Arriba Juntos' illegal and unacceptable bad practices. More Photos can be found at our Flickr and regular Yahoo! Group sites. You can also see the exposure of this reckless handling of their client files using this google search: Google Search for: sfhomeless and Arriba http://www.google.com/search?&q=sfhomeless+arriba ATTENTION LOCAL SF DUMPSTER DIVERS! If you see client files on the streets and sidewalks in front of local SF non-profits, please call or email us immediately, so we can document it and notify the non-profit of the bad practice. THANK YOU ! Google Search: SFHomeless Yahoo Group: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22sfhomeless+yahoo%22&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq= We appreciate YOUR HELP to keep us all safe and improve the lives of all San Francisco residents. Keep sending us YOUR Life Stories, Tips, Kudos, Complaints, Photos, Videos and research. YOUR VOICES MAKE CHANGE HAPPEN FOR US ALL, EVERY DAY! 'SFHomeless Yahoo! Group Moderators ' Mario, Ronaldo and Francesco Category:systematic abuse, social justice, public safety, corruption, human trafficking, hiring standards, reform, save lives, plan for failure, human rights, abuse,crimes against humanity, trust issues, homelessness, sfhomeless, yahoo groups, san francisco, care not cash, non-profits Category:Information Community Action Agencies Category:Forums Category:Help Category:Housing Opportunities Category:Criminal Justice System Category:Events Category:Legal Agencies / Advocacy Category:Government Agencies Category:Immigration / New To San Francisco Category:Other Related Sites Category:Homeless Residents Category:Homeless Policy and Legislation Category:Community Watchdog Groups Category:ID Theft Risk Category:Identity Theft Risk Category:Whistleblowers Category:negligent practices Category:violation of privacy Category:cause for action Category:california state office of privacy rights Category:dppa Category:At Risk Clients Category:criminal activity Category:corruption Category:anti-corruption Category:social justice Category:Privacy Rights Category:Policy Category:Housing